1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording device for effecting recording on a recording object material of a sheet shape and a sheet material conveying device for conveying a sheet material and, particularly, to the structure of an exterior cover for protecting a drive mechanism portion of these devices.
2. Related Background Art
There are recording devices having the functions of a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile machine, and the like or recording devices used as output devices of composite electronic devices including computers, word processors, and so on, and workstations, which are constructed in such structure that an image is formed on a recording object material (a recording medium) such as paper, plastic thin film, or the like, based on image information. These recording devices can be classified under the ink jet type, the wire dot type, the thermal type, the laser beam type, and so on, depending upon their recording methods.
With the recent tendency to downsize the computers, portable computers like notebook type computers are becoming widespread. In connection therewith, compact recording devices with the principal object on portability have been proposed heretofore.
FIG. 47 is an exterior view of a conventional recording device.
As illustrated in FIG. 47, the exterior for protecting the drive mechanism portion of the recording device is generally partitioned into a lower case 1001 and an upper case 1002. During assembling or during disassembling, these cases are attached or detached at this partition part. The upper case 1002 and the lower case 1001 are secured to each other with four screws 1003.
In the conventional exterior structure as described above, however, the screws penetrate the cases vertically, so that the drive mechanism portion cannot be placed in the screw-penetrating areas. Therefore, the size of the exterior had to be designed with consideration to the screw-penetrating areas, which was hindrance to the scale reduction of the entire device. Use of the many screws also caused increase in the number of assembling steps and in the number of parts and in turn caused increase in the cost.
A snap fit fastening method is one of methods for coupling the upper case with the lower case without use of screws. The coupling by the snap fit method, however, is less rugged than that by fastening with screws and the coupling by the snap fit method cannot be resistant to use if consideration is given to impact on the recording devices with the principal object on portability while being carried and to cases in which another device, a book, or the like can be mounted on the recording device because of its compactness.